


The Patron Saint of Lost Causes

by saltandrockets



Series: I Don't Want Love [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Leia is a good person who doesn't deserve this, Mpreg, Rey's backstory is vague but she's definitely a Skywalker, Skywalker Family Drama, Trans Character, Trans Hux, Trans Male Character, a couple of OCs in minor roles, congrats Leia you're gonna be a grandma, space latinx, the kylux is technically offscreen and yet the whole fic revolves around it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 16:01:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7898929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandrockets/pseuds/saltandrockets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To avoid on-the-spot execution, General Hux surrenders to the Resistance. Leia couldn’t be happier to finally have her adversary in custody—until she learns that he’s pregnant. Little do either of them realize, Hux is carrying Leia’s grandchild.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Patron Saint of Lost Causes

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a companion to [Bear](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7193663)—essentially, it’s Leia’s side of the story. while this story can stand on its own, I recommend reading Bear first.
> 
> because I didn’t want to straight-up Midnight Sun this, most of the content in this fic is new. however, a few scenes also appeared in Bear, and are presented here from Leia’s perspective, rather than Hux’s.
> 
> content warnings: this fic focuses largely on a trans man’s pregnancy, though there are no graphic details. there is also a brief mention of abortion. if this story starts to make you feel weird/uncomfortable/etc, feel free to click that back arrow. as always, read safely, friends!
> 
> pretentious title inspired by [“St. Jude” by Florence + the Machine,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEMSJf723BI) which I had on loop while writing this. in Catholicism, Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes and hopeless cases.

_another conversation with no destination / another battle never won / and each side is a loser / so who cares who fired the gun?_

— [“St. Jude,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEMSJf723BI) Florence + the Machine

\--

Leia looks up in surprise and dismay, toward the powder-blue Twi'lek standing before her desk. “Come again?”

“The prisoner,” Lieutenant Janna-Wei says again, looking faintly anxious, her datapad clutched almost defensively in front of her chest. She is Leia’s personal aide—hand-picked for the position, trusted with sensitive information. And good thing, because this information is about as sensitive as it gets. “He was examined in medbay, as you ordered, and the test came back positive.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“They ran the blood work twice. I can get you a copy of the results, if you like, General.”

Leia shakes her head. “That won’t be necessary,” she says, though part of her is still struggling to process this information. “Have him transferred to a secure cell. Set up a guard rotation—only soldiers you know we can rely on. Nobody who’s twitchy or trigger-happy or looking for revenge. Discretion is key. Everything related to this prisoner is strictly need-to-know.”

“Understood. I’ll take care of it right away, General.” With that, Janna-Wei slips out of Leia’s office, her boots tapping a sharp rhythm.

Once she’s gone, Leia rubs her temples, already feeling a headache coming on. When she was first briefed on General Hux’s capture—rather, his surrender—she gave an involuntary huff. Claiming to be pregnant to avoid on-the-spot execution? That was a new one. Slippery as ever, Hux had managed to save his skin. For the moment, at least.

 _Well-played,_ Leia had thought dryly, and gave the order for him to be sent to medbay immediately upon his arrival on the base. Soon enough, they would call his bluff and the real work could begin.

And then, a couple of hours later, Janna-Wei walked into her office and threw a wrench in all of Leia’s plans.

Hux wasn’t bluffing. He’s actually pregnant. And that complicates a process that should’ve been relatively straightforward.

So what is she supposed to do now?

 

\--

 

Within the hour, Leia has called an emergency meeting to discuss what’s to be done about General Hux. 

The fewer people who know of his capture, and especially his presence on this base, the better. To that end, only Leia’s most trusted officers are here in the command room: a handful of need-to-knows at the very top of Resistance leadership. Rey, Finn and Poe have been invited to this meeting, as well—they’re not part of command, technically speaking, but to Leia, they are essential. They’ve earned the right to be here.

She only wishes Luke were here to advise her. When Rey came back from her training, she had a slew of new skills, a handful of truths about her own past, and a renewed determination—but she didn’t have Luke. He’s still committed to his life of solitude and self-flagellation. If Rey couldn’t coax him into venturing out again, his own daughter, maybe no one can. Leia can’t even reach out to her twin through the Force; he’s closed himself off to her and everyone else.

“We shouldn’t treat him differently than we would any other First Order prisoner,” Admiral Pelor is saying. It’s a common sentiment, Leia has noticed, though not everyone agrees. “We can’t. This… _complication_ shouldn’t make a difference. He has information that we need, and we have to get it, by any means necessary.”

“Well, yes, but—he’s having a baby,” Rey says, emphatically, as if everyone else has somehow failed to understand. “You can’t rough somebody up for information when they’re going to have a baby. Not even someone like him.” She glances around, eyebrows raised, almost imploringly. “It wouldn’t be right, would it?”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say he planned this,” Finn mutters. “It’s way too convenient.”

Poe reaches over to give Finn’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, then addresses the room. “Look,” he says. “I hate to be the first to use the word _torture,_ but we’re all thinking it. Let’s not be coy. Right now, we’re deciding whether or not we’re going to torture Hux.” A few people look disquieted by his frankness, which is probably what he was going for. “I really believe we shouldn’t go there. If we play our cards right, it may not even come to that.”

Statura looks skeptical. “How do you figure?”

“We all know Hux is a guy who values himself pretty highly. If he thinks that cooperating with us might save him from a death sentence when this is over, he might talk.”

“Nothing will save him from a death sentence,” Major Remlin says immediately, his expression dark. “He’s bound to know that. He’s not getting out of this alive, not after what he’s done—”

“His kid, then!” Poe says. “If he won’t talk for his own sake, he might do it if he thinks it’ll help his kid later on. We should emphasize that angle, see if we get any traction with him, and—”

Poe is drowned out as the room erupts into chatter again, everyone speaking over one another, heated. Leia allows it for half a minute while she gathers her own thoughts.

Torture. Poe was right—they can’t sugarcoat it. They’re sitting around arguing over whether they should torture General Hux, who also happens to be pregnant. Nobody in this room knows as much about the realities of torture as Poe Dameron—except perhaps Leia. Even now, all these years later, she can’t forget what she endured while she was a captive on the Death Star.

She still remembers writhing on the floor, feeling as if she was burning alive from the inside out, every cell in her body aflame. Darth Vader had loomed above her like a black hole, like the end of everything. Leia was only nineteen when it happened, but once it was done, she felt decades older. She carries that torture with her still, and the memory of it twinges sometimes, as cruelly as a phantom limb.

When Leia finally rises from her seat, the others gradually fall silent, looking to her. Leia deeply values their input, and they know it—but they also know she was always going to make the final call.

“Hux will remain on this base for the time being,” Leia announces. However this pans out, good or ill, she will accept the responsibility. “He will be questioned thoroughly, but he won’t be harmed. As Poe said, he may very well decide to cooperate, if he thinks talking could benefit him in some way in the future.”

“Or he’ll feed us false information,” Ackbar says dubiously.

“I acknowledge that possibility. However—”

At the far end of the table, Admiral Pelor shakes her head again. “So he’ll sit around in a cell for the next nine months, laughing at us? General, I can’t accept that—”

Leia raises a hand to forestall any more protests. “I understand your frustration,” she says. “I do. But I won’t allow him to be tortured for information. It’s not our way. It’s not how we’ll win this war. When he’s had the child, perhaps we can reassess our methods, if necessary. In the meantime, this is the best we can do.” She looks around, scanning the faces in the room. Nobody looks happy—but nobody looks outright mutinous, either, and that’s more than she’d hoped for. Whatever their personal feelings, they can at least understand her logic. She exhales through her nose. “All right, then. It’s decided.”

 

\--

 

When Leia goes to speak with Hux in person, the first thing she does is dismiss the guards. They slink out of the cell, reluctant to leave her alone with a war criminal, but their presence is unnecessary. Hux can’t possibly hurt her—he’s chained to the table, hand and foot. It’s actually a little excessive, she thinks. Even if Hux could move freely, she doubts he would attempt to harm her. He’s nowhere near that stupid, or that desperate. At least, not yet. 

Even wearing beige prisoner’s clothes, with a few garnet scabs on his face from the battle, Hux somehow manages to look imperious. “I hope I didn’t shock your physician too badly,” he says, as Leia takes a seat across the table from him.

If he’s attempting to goad or unsettle her, Leia thinks, he’ll be disappointed. She is a modern woman of the galaxy; it takes quite a lot to scandalize her these days. Hux does not even have the distinction of being the first pregnant human man she’s known personally. She and Luke were once thought to be identical twins, though they proved to be different genders—and, of course, Luke eventually gave birth to Rey.

“A misunderstanding,” she says. “Your status isn’t common knowledge.”

“Why would it be? Medical records are sealed for a reason. Do you advertise your anatomy, General?”

Leia does not dignify that with a response. “I knew your father,” she says instead. “We crossed paths from time to time, anyway. I must say, I’m a little surprised. He didn’t strike me as a particularly… _understanding_ man.”

Hux’s face betrays nothing, but Leia knows he must be thinking of his father now. Leia remembers Brendol Hux as a blustering pig of a man with a grossly overinflated sense of self-importance. The last she heard, the commandant was in declining health, clinging to life in a medical facility on Arkanis. She wonders when his son last saw him.

“Is that really what you want to discuss?” Hux asks. “My relationship with my father?”

“Did you have something else in mind?”

“Somehow, I expected you to be more interested in my knowledge of the First Order than my personal matters.”

“We’ll get to that, I’m sure.” Using the Force, Leia applies gentle pressure to his mind, just enough to skim his uppermost thoughts—and there it is. Her eyes widen. “Ah. I see why you’re so eager to stay away from the subject. You didn’t know.”

“Know what?”

She can feel it now, plain as day: a humming, bone-deep anxiety. “When you were captured, you said you were pregnant to avoid being shot on sight. Isn’t that correct? You were stalling for time. And when the blood test came back positive, you were as shocked as any of us.” She allows herself a small smile. “You got a little more than you bargained for, didn’t you, General?”

Hux glowers at her from across the table, but it’s all for show. She can sense the heavy thudding of his pulse. He doesn’t like this new development, doesn’t want it at all.

If he prefers a termination, that can be arranged easily enough. There are medidroids on this base programmed with the procedure. It’s important to have such facilities available to soldiers, if they choose; the middle of a war is an especially inconvenient time to have a baby. As for Hux, it would be inhumane to force him to carry a pregnancy he doesn’t want when they have the facilities to end it, and Leia has resolved to treat him humanely—not for his sake, really, but for hers. She is not like him. She’ll prove it.

Of course, he would have to ask for the procedure, and Leia knows he never will. However distressed he might be, now or later, he also knows that his condition is all that stands between him and punishment for his crimes. Barring any complications, he will surely have the child.

Leaning forward, Leia says, “Here’s how this is going to work. It’s very simple. We have questions about the First Order—their numbers, their weapons and resources, their bases and strategies. You have information that can help us end this war and prevent more pointless bloodshed. When the time comes for you to be tried for your crimes against the galaxy, your cooperation will be taken into account—”

Hux makes a derisive noise. “So perhaps I can slave in a spice mine instead of face a public execution? And all I have to do is commit treason. A tempting offer.”

 _Well,_ Leia thinks darkly, _nobody_ _’s ever accused him of being stupid._ He must know as well as she does that his chances of survival are practically nil. “It would be a better fate than you deserve.”

His mouth tightens. “And if I don’t cooperate, what then? Extended torture? Enhanced interrogation techniques? That would be rather banal of you. And as we’ve established,” he adds, almost mockingly, “I’m in a somewhat delicate condition. I’m not sure my health would permit it.”

He says it easily, as if all this is nothing to him, but Leia knows better. Inside, his mind is reeling. “It’s strange,” she says. “Not to mention hypocritical. A man like you, leaning on our basic decency. You murdered billions of beings, and yet you have the audacity to expect mercy—”

“Not for myself,” Hux says, enunciating clearly, each syllable dripping with insinuation.

Leia fights the urge to grind her teeth. It’s all a farce with him, isn’t it? Everything is a power play. Already, it’s maddening. Finally, she says, “For the time being, you won’t be harmed. But I wonder if someone who’s committed the atrocities you have can truly care for anything, even your own child.”

Hux has the gall to smile at her, baring his teeth, as if he has some power here. And in a way, Leia thinks grimly, he does—he has invaluable strategic knowledge to dangle in front of them, and the assurance that they won’t try to beat it out of him. For now, he has the carrot, and the Resistance has no stick.

“I suppose we’ll find out together,” Hux says smugly. “Won’t we?”

 

\--

 

In the last few months, Hux’s hair has outgrown its regulation cut, and a coppery beard has grown in, as well. Combined, the two changes make him look almost like a different person. His eyes are the same, though: the sharpness, the clarity. Leia can almost see him running endless calculations in his head, just from his eyes.

She does not always have time in her schedule for these largely-fruitless interviews with Hux, but there are some pieces of news that she likes to deliver personally. On such occasions, she makes the time.

They’ve taken another Star Destroyer—Resurgent-class, a crew of forty thousand. The strike was beautifully executed, with minimal casualties on both sides. It’s an ideal victory for the Resistance, both strategically and for morale purposes.

Glancing at the datapad display, Hux’s eyebrows arch. “The _Resolute,_ is it? I see. She was under General Salazar’s command, and he was never much of a tactician. Cracked under pressure, I expect.”

“How many more Star Destroyers does the First Order have left to throw at us, again?” Leia asks. “You’ve already lost the _Iron Hand,_ and now the _Resolute_ —”

“A hollow victory,” Hux declares, with a wave of his hand. “Nothing to be proud of. As I said, the _Resolute_ was ripe for the picking. Capture a ship that has someone competent at the helm and I might be impressed by your military might.”

“A ship like the _Finalizer,_ you mean?”

Hux shakes his head. “You won’t take that one.”

“What makes you so sure?” Leia asks. When Hux doesn’t respond, she leans forward. “Who has command of the _Finalizer_ at present?”

“Impossible to say.”

“You must know the chain of command.”

“Naturally. I didn’t mean that I’m unaware,” Hux says easily. “I mean that it’s impossible for me to tell you—I refuse.”

Leia exhales through her nose. “Naturally,” she echoes. Then a thought strikes her. “He may well be dead by now,” she says, knowing that Hux doesn’t have to ask who she means. “If he was on board the _Steadfast,_ or any of the other ships we’ve taken recently. Have you considered that possibility?”

The look he gives her is a blend of amusement and distaste. “I rather doubt that, General.”

His words could mean anything, Leia thinks, or nothing at all. With him, it’s practically impossible to tell purposeful misdirection from worthless truth. “He has no idea you’re carrying his child, does he?” she asks suddenly. “He couldn’t—you didn’t know yourself. What would he say, if he could see you now?”

The thought must have crossed Hux’s mind, even if he’ll never admit to it. His baggy, prisoner-issue clothes hid the changes well enough for the first few months, but now the fabric hangs differently on him, his stomach rounded in that particular way that’s impossible to confuse with mere weight gain. He is unmistakably pregnant, and apparently more determined than ever to ignore that fact. If anything, he’s become more guarded now that he’s showing, as if he can make up for that vulnerability.

Needling him about his condition is just about the only way to provoke an interesting response from him—so, naturally, Leia brings it up at least once during every session.

Sure enough, there’s a brief muscle spasm across Hux’s face, which he quickly gets under control. Leia saw it, though, and she’ll file the memory of it away for later use.

It’s not just his facial expressions that interest her, though—his other physiological responses are more telling. From the moment she first posed the question, months ago, she sensed Hux’s distress. He hides it well, outwardly, but he can’t disguise the way his pulse races, the way his breath hitches, or the panic rippling through him.

Whoever the father is, he obviously matters a great deal to Hux. He plays at flippancy, but he fears for the man, Leia can tell. That’s an obvious weak point to target. If she knows the father’s identity, she can find a way to leverage it against Hux to get the information that only he can supply—information that will make the Resistance’s campaign much easier. Best of all would be to capture the man, to hold his life in her hands. Short of that, Leia is confident she can make something work with only a name. She’s done more with less in the past.

The simplest solution would be to rummage through Hux’s mind and extract the name, but Leia can’t—not without Hux noticing, and not without risking severe damage to him if he resists. Besides, she meant it when she told him she wouldn’t violate another being that way. But if she uses a light touch, she can safely skim his uppermost thoughts, undetected. And if she times it right, in moments like this one, she can detect traces of memory that float to the surface before Hux can tamp them back down.

It’s never a complete picture, just moments, impressions. Smoke rising from a cigarette. A man’s broad back, pale and scarred. The smell of salt and copper. Nothing that can pin down the father’s identity.

“Wouldn’t you rather know if he’s alive or dead?” Leia asks him now. She gives him a long look. “Unless you didn’t care for him at all.” Her curiosity is genuine—she wonders, sometimes, just how much human emotion Hux is capable of, and how much he would be willing to accept. She wants to know how much of a person is really there, under his skin. “Did he care for you? Could anyone?”

Hux meets her gaze coolly, his eyes like glass. “The way they talked about you, I thought you would be more fearsome,” he says, in a carefully-controlled voice. “Ruthless, even. The great Leia Organa. But if this is the best you can do, then you are much less than I imagined you would be.”

Leia doesn’t laugh at his pretense of untouchable haughtiness, but she wants to. He would be mortified to know that she can sense the heavy thud of his pulse, the undercurrent of panic spreading through his veins.

The longer this game drags on, the more determined Leia has become to uncover the information. She hates the smug look Hux gets whenever she prods him, the one that plainly says: _I_ _’ll never tell, and you’ll never make me. This secret is mine and mine alone._

Not for the first time, Leia imagines watching the color bleach from Hux’s face when she speaks the father’s name and he finally understands that he has no power anymore—that he has nothing, because she has taken it all.

She’ll get the name, Leia promises herself. One way or another, she’ll get it.

 

\--

 

On the way out of a strategy meeting that ran unexpectedly late into the night, Poe falls into step beside Leia. For once, BB-8 doesn’t skitter along at his feet, which suggests to Leia that Poe wants to have a private word. She’s caught him looking at her lately, his eyes dark and thoughtful, his mouth pressed into a line, as if to hold back his own words. It’s unlike him not to be direct, but Leia hasn’t pressed him so far.

“Something on your mind, Poe?” Leia asks finally, as they turn into an empty corridor. She doesn’t pose the question in Basic, but in another tongue that is a first language to both of them.

Early in her friendship with Poe’s late mother, Shara Bey, Leia discovered that they shared a common language. There were some differences in dialect, certainly, but they understood each other perfectly well, and it was a great comfort to Leia to hear her native language again, spoken beautifully. She savored those conversations with Shara and Kes, both during and after the war. These days, she similarly enjoys her conversations with Poe.

He hesitates; the look on his face says it all. In the same language, he asks, “Permission to speak freely, General?”

She gestures to him with an open hand. “I welcome it.”

In a low voice, Poe says, “I know there’s been some grumbling from the rest of command, but—you made the right decision. And I’m grateful that you did.” He takes a breath, as though steeling himself. “Which isn’t to say that I don’t understand the desire to make him suffer. I get it. Hell, I feel it, too. But I couldn’t live with myself knowing that we’d done to someone else what the First Order did to me, and I just stood by and let it happen.”

“Neither could I,” Leia tells him, and she means it. “And I appreciate your support, Poe. I only wish we were making more progress with our current methods.”

“Well, it’s better than the alternative. How could we call ourselves the good guys in this if we torture prisoners?” He shakes his head, looking suddenly grim. “It kills something inside of you to do that to another being. I could feel it, sometimes, when he—when I was—”

“You don’t have to say it,” Leia tells him, gently, and a breath escapes him, as if in relief. “I know.”

Poe knows who Kylo Ren really is, under the mask. Leia told him around the same time she broke the news to Rey—largely because she didn’t think it was fair to ask Rey to keep such an enormous, painful secret from someone so close to her, and also because she regretted not telling him sooner. She should’ve confessed to him when he first made it back to the old base on D’Qar and explained what had happened to him. He deserved to know the truth about who had tortured him.

At least he knows now. They haven’t talked about it, not at length, but it hangs between them all the same, in the empty spaces between their words.

Poe is Shara’s boy, of course, and Leia’s known him since he was small, in the early days after the war, though their families were rarely in the same place for long. But there was that season on Hosnian Prime, just before Poe entered the New Republic Starfleet, when he was seventeen and Leia invited him to stay a few weeks in her apartments in Republic City.

Ben had come back from his most recent trip with Han—they’d been to see some championship race, though Leia can no longer recall which one—and was unhappy to say the least when he found a strange, older boy in the guest room. He was only twelve then, and unused to sharing this private space that was normally just his and Leia’s. Of course, Leia was so busy with the Senate then that she was barely ever home; Ben had been prepared to spend another season in those apartments with Threepio as his most frequent companion.

That’s part of why Leia had thought it would be nice to have Poe around. He was a friendly boy with an easy smile, effortlessly charming, a hard worker, a good example for Ben—and Ben was having none of it.

Poe made countless valiant attempts to win Ben over. He took Ben out in the luxury speeders that Leia never had the time or inclination to pilot herself, and probably even let him drive. He admired all the little mechanical gizmos that Ben liked to build and asked him lots of questions. He regaled Ben with war stories that involved both of their fathers, and promised to take him flying someday in his late mother’s beloved A-wing. He even cooked tamales, according to his father’s recipe, which Ben had never tasted before; in fact, because of the plantain wrapping, Ben mistook them for pasteles at first glance. Poe had laughed at him—not maliciously, of course, but Ben was always hypersensitive to teasing and was in a sour mood for the rest of that night.

Ben managed to stay sullen for the entirety of Poe’s stay, though he would redden conspicuously when Poe tousled his hair or attempted to initiate some big-brotherly roughhousing. When Poe left at the end of the season, he thanked Leia graciously for her hospitality, and Leia felt compelled to apologize for Ben’s standoffishness. Poe rejected this out of hand.

“Oh, he’s a real sweet kid,” Poe had said, and oddly enough, Leia thought he meant it. “Smart, too. I bet he’ll make a hell of a pilot someday—if you’ll excuse my language, ma’am.”

“I’m sorry,” Leia tells him now, once again. She reaches out to grasp his arm—a breach of military etiquette, perhaps, but in the moment, it feels like the only thing to do. “Poe, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I won’t ask you to forgive me for my part in what happened—”

And just like before, Poe looks at her like she’s speaking Huttese. It breaks her heart, a little. “General, what are you talking about? You weren’t responsible for what the First Order did to me—”

“I sent you on that mission,” Leia says, and she thinks he hears what she doesn’t say: _It was my son who tortured you._

“I was honored to go. And if I could go back to that day, knowing everything that would happen if I accepted—I’d do it again.”

She doesn’t wince, but it’s a near thing. “Poe…”

“You know,” he says suddenly, “I didn’t want to believe it at first, when you told me about Ben—or Kylo Ren, or whatever we’re supposed to call him these days. Sometimes it still doesn’t seem right, like it’s got to be a big misunderstanding. But it is what it is. And you have to know I don’t blame you, General, for any of it.” He’s looking at her steadily, his eyes dark and shiny. “With all due respect, it’s hard for me to imagine how any kid of yours could’ve turned out… like that. Whatever happened to make him that way, I’m sure it had nothing to do with you.”

Poe may not blame her, Leia thinks, but he doesn’t have to. She has plenty of blame for herself.

But she can’t tell him that. Instead, she releases his arm and nods. “Thank you for your candor, Poe.”

“My pleasure, General.” He gives her a faint smile and a salute, then excuses himself—off to Finn’s room, no doubt. Because they haven’t made any kind of announcement—out of a sense of professionalism, perhaps, or just a desire to keep something precious to themselves—Leia pretends not to know that the two of them are carrying on. But even if she didn’t have the Force whispering to her, the way they look at each other and come up with silly excuses to touch would make it clear enough.

Leia is glad for them, she is. Somebody ought to have some happiness in the midst of this war.

When she lets herself into her quarters, she leaves the lights low; hours of staring at holograms in that strategy meeting have strained her eyes. They went over a considerable amount of intel tonight—but once again, there was no word of Kylo Ren. It’s been that way for months. Around the time of Hux’s capture, he seemed to disappear. Leia can’t decide how she feels about it.

There was a time when he would surface every few weeks as part of some First Order operation or other—raids on outposts, communication facilities, ore mines and weapons factories. Leia would hear rumors about his shadowy tasks from her contacts in the Outer Rim and the Unknown Regions, or she would receive copies of the statements made by survivors who had witnessed him. Those statements were few and far between; Kylo Ren did not usually leave anyone to tell tales.

Occasionally, Leia glimpsed him in security holos obtained after the fact: a dark and imposing shape, masked, unrecognizable as human or even organic. She sees nothing of her son that robed figure, but she’s seen footage of him in combat, and she recognizes his swordsmanship. He’d demonstrated his lightsaber technique for her the handful of times she’d visited him during his training with Luke.

He had always looked at her with an uncertain smile when he deactivated the training saber, wanting her praise, wanting her to be proud of him. She can’t imagine how he might look at her now.

Leia sorts through Ben’s old holos. She kept all of his messages, everything he sent her from the time he went away with Luke. She’s watched each one more times than she can count. Sometimes he’s homesick in the messages, awfully, in a way that’s hard to watch, and begs her to let him come home. In other holos, he’s proud of some new accomplishment, a milestone in his training, and eager to tell her. Most of them are simple check-ins.

The message she watches most often is the last one he ever sent. Leia plays it at night sometimes, when she can’t sleep, scrutinizing his word choice and body language for some hint of what was going on inside of him. She pulls up the holo now.

And there he is—his face, his voice. He’s right in front of her, but he can’t hear her, and she can never touch him.

Ben is barely more than a boy, ears poking out through his shaggy dark hair, shoulders beginning to broaden. The holo is grainy and damaged from radiation as it bounced across space to reach her, blue-tinted, but Leia can make out the dark circles under Ben’s eyes. He never slept well, not even as a baby.

By now, Leia can recite the whole message by heart. He speaks in lilting Alderaanian, which was something of a private language for the two of them during his childhood, one they spoke together at home: _Hi, Mama. It_ _’s me. Sorry I didn’t answer your last message sooner, I’ve just been—you know. Busy. And I understand why you can’t visit this year, it’s okay. Maybe next year. Anyway, I’m doing all right…_

She searches his face once again for some sign of what was to come. But it’s just like all the other messages he’d sent while he was away with Luke. Nothing amiss, nothing to suggest he was poised to…

Except he may not have been poised to do anything, Leia thinks grimly, not quite yet. It was only when the news of that disastrous Senate meeting reached him that everything changed, when he learned that Leia was Darth Vader’s daughter—and that he himself was Darth Vader’s grandson. Something snapped inside him in that moment, she thinks. Something broke free that he’d been struggling to contain.

Ben should never have found out that way: cruelly, at the same time as the rest of the galaxy. It should’ve come from Leia, years before. She had been a fool to think she could keep it from him all his life, protect him from his own heritage. She played a part in all this, in what he’s become.

And now he’s disappeared again.

He’s not dead, at least. Leia knows that much and takes some small measure of comfort in it. She would feel it if he were dead: a black hole in the Force, pulling her in and down, as it did when Han died—except, no, he didn’t just die. Ben killed him, though it pains her to think of it that way, to admit even to herself that their son was capable of such an act.

She wants so badly to believe in him. It’s hard, especially when something reminds her of Han and she feels his absence anew, but she does her best. She likes to imagine, sometimes, that Kylo Ren has disappeared because Ben has defected, abandoned the First Order and gone off to some distant world to live peacefully. Maybe he could have a family of his own someday. Maybe he could love someone, and be loved, and be happier than he ever was before.

It’s much more likely that he’s retreated to Snoke’s side, or slipped away on another dark mission—but she allows herself to hope. She can have that much. In fact, it’s all she has.

 

\--

 

Sometimes, when the mood strikes her, Leia watches the security feed for Hux’s cell. In the beginning, it was because she thought she might glean something useful from observing him, but he never does anything particularly telling. Now she does it out of habit. Checking in on him like this has become something of a hobby. She pulls up the feed while she’s working alone in her quarters, leaves it running on a small side console so she can half-watch it in her peripheral vision.

She used to regularly see him puking up whatever they’d fed him that day, but his morning sickness abated some time ago. These days, he alternates between three chief activities. Sometimes he reads the handful of holobooks he’s been given. Sometimes he paces around the small space for lengthy periods. It must be maddening to be locked in a windowless cell at all hours, most of that time spent alone, but it’s far better than he deserves.

But more and more lately, the closer he gets to term, he just sleeps. At least, he pretends to. He may well just be lying there with his eyes closed, scheming, much good it will do him.

He probably is actually sleeping. Even in ideal circumstances, developing another human is hard on the body. Leia remembers how exhausted she was when she was pregnant with Ben—all the time, it seemed like, even when she wasn’t exerting herself much. If Hux is worn-down at this late stage, she can almost— _almost_ —sympathize.

Leia glances at the cell feed. Hux happens to be awake right now, perched on the edge of the cot, kneading the base of his spine with one hand and grimacing. What she wouldn’t give to know what’s really going through his head.

He would never do anything so telling in front of her or anyone else, she thinks. During interviews, he’s stone-faced and haughty, projecting an air of indifference. The way he comports himself, it’s as if he’s unaffected by his condition—as if he’s forgotten that he’s about to have a baby and would prefer that everyone else do the same. Only when he’s alone does he concede to his discomfort, and even then, it’s not by much.

Presumably, it’s because he’s aware that he is under constant surveillance. He must know, too, that someone is monitoring the feed—though she doubts he has an inkling that she herself watches personally. She is embarrassed to give him so much of her time. She wonders if he would find it gratifying to know that she cares enough to spy on him, or if he would be humiliated to realize she’s seen him like this.

For a minute, she watches him continue to shift uncomfortably, rubbing at his back. He looks—vulnerable, almost, in a way that disquiets her.

Leia switches off the feed abruptly. She turns back to her work, and tells herself she won’t check in on him like this again.

 

\--

 

The remains of the _Finalizer_ are scattered over several kilometers of scrubland on a sparsely-populated Outer Rim world. If there are any intact bodies among the wreckage, they haven’t been recovered yet, and they likely never will—most organic matter would’ve evaporated in the explosions. Leia watches Hux carefully as he studies the datapad display on the table between them, which shows footage of the still-smoking wreckage, but his expression remains carefully neutral.

It wasn’t a planned attack. Rather, it came together by chance, while the _Finalizer_ was in orbit above that world. The Resistance happened to be in the right place at the right time; of course, it was the opposite situation for the _Finalizer_ and her crew.

“Shot down?” Hux asks dubiously.

“It went down on the planet’s surface before it could be boarded,” Leia says. “Broke up into three pieces as it entered atmo, and disintegrated from there. By all accounts, the crash looked intentional.”

“They scuttled the ship. I told you that you’d never take it.” Hux’s tone is faintly approving, as if he had expected nothing less, but there’s something else, too, hiding underneath. He glances up. “Casualties?”

Leia shakes her head. “You know how this works. Give me something first—something of value.”

Hux hesitates, as if he’s really considering it. He wants this information badly, Leia can tell. He wants to know how many of his people died in the crash and subsequent explosions, and how many might’ve fled in escape shuttles to fight another day. Leia is willing to tell him, for the right price; the information would offer him no tactical advantage, no real power.

By now, the Resistance has learned that, at the time of the attack, the _Finalizer_ was sorely understaffed, with a crew of only fifty thousand. Before the crash, a few thousand managed to escape onto shuttles, some of which were shot down by Resistance starfighters; others were disabled and captured. The rest of the crew was lost with the Star Destroyer—around thirty-five thousand souls in total, as far as they can tell.

It’s an enormous number, a sickening loss of life. Leia has to remind herself that the Resistance had never intended to destroy the _Finalizer_ and everyone on board, merely capture them. All that blood is on the hands of those who were at the helm in the last frantic minutes. Of course, she thinks grimly, they’re dead now, too, and beyond responsibility.

Watching Hux deliberate, Leia slowly identifies the undercurrent of emotion she’d sensed before: grief. Whether it’s for his ship or for his crew, she can’t quite tell.

It’s easy, Leia knows, painfully easy, to develop a sense of personal responsibility and protectiveness toward one’s soldiers that’s so strong it becomes a liability. A weak spot. Could Hux have actually crossed that line, emotionally? Is he capable of such attachment? She wonders if he wishes he’d been there, to save his ship or go down with her.

“In the Varlaak system, there is—” Hux breaks off suddenly, wincing hard. Leia has never seen him do anything of the kind.

“Are you all right?” She reaches out with the Force instinctively, searching for the cause of distress. It could be a sudden hemorrhage or detachment, a knotted umbilical cord, even—oh.

There’s no complication. The baby is just kicking—forcefully.

A moment passes. Hux doesn’t touch his swollen stomach. He never does, which seems almost unnatural to Leia and must take considerable restraint. He shifts in his seat, looking disquieted, as if he’s waiting for the movement to stop.

“That’s normal,” Leia feels compelled to say, half because she knows it will annoy him, and half because she suspects he really may not understand this. He probably thinks of his baby as a parasite of some kind, a tumor leeching off him. “It’s supposed to move around. Regular activity means it’s healthy.”

The baby does seem healthy, as far as Leia can tell. From where she’s sitting, she can sense its heartbeat as easily as she senses Hux’s: steady and strong. If she were to reach out more purposefully with the Force, she would be able to feel more—perhaps even glean something about its vitality, its life force—but she won’t. It would feel too much like a bodily invasion, she thinks, and besides, it wouldn’t benefit the Resistance in any way.

Hux is glaring at her. “Fortunately for both of us,” he says crisply, “it won’t be long before we can end this tiresome song and dance. Won’t that be a relief, to give up the pretense of civility?”

Leia is somewhat taken aback. He never speaks so plainly about his pregnancy, or its inevitable conclusion. But of course, he’s right: He is due in about six weeks—Leia has kept track. Very soon, he’ll have the baby, and then everything else will move forward, as it should’ve from the beginning. The trial can begin at last. Hux’s fate will be decided, one way or another, and then Leia can put him behind her as she turns her attention fully to the end of this war.

“It won’t be the only thing you give up,” Leia comments. She doesn’t know what they’ll do with the baby once it’s born, precisely, except that Hux won’t be allowed to keep it.

He doesn’t respond, though he must suspect. He just steals another glance at the datapad display, where the _Finalizer_ is still burning.

 

\--

 

It’s a girl.

At least, that’s what Leia assumes, remembering that once, a long time ago, Hux’s family had looked at him and wrongly assumed he was female, too. For now, she supposes the gender designation is acceptable. And in the future, if it turns out to be incorrect, she’ll never know, since her involvement is about to end.

Late last night, a private comm from the chief medical officer informed her that Hux had gone into labor, and Leia gave approval for him to be covertly transferred to medbay at the earliest opportunity. She also approved pain relief, to be administered as necessary. It was in her power to deny Hux that, and she was tempted to let him suffer. But they had treated him humanely so far, more than he deserved, and she figured they might as well see it through. Pointless cruelty was his way, not hers.

Leia put it from her mind once her orders were issued, knowing she would be updated on the situation as it progressed. She refused to dwell on Hux; he didn’t deserve that much of her time. She had other, more important matters to see to.

Almost twenty hours later, her comm chimed again, this time alerting her that Hux had delivered a healthy child, with no complications. Leia noted the information, then wiped it from her comm’s memory. The fewer who were aware of the situation, the better, and she couldn’t be too careful.

She’s here now, in this private room in medbay, to satisfy her curiosity. It’s early morning, before she’s expected in any meetings, so she has a little time. She wants to see this mystery child, wants to reach out with the Force and search for the light and the dark. And then, of course, there’s the not-insignificant matter of spite.

Leia takes a quiet, awful pleasure in the knowledge that she’s getting a proper look at the baby when Hux never has, and never will. He wants her to think he doesn’t care, that none of this matters to him. He’s feigned disinterest all this time, well enough to convince the Resistance leadership that he is truly as callous as any creature can be—but privately, Leia has her doubts.

Here, at last, is something she can take from him.

Medbay wasn’t initially equipped to accommodate an infant; under ordinary circumstances, there are no children on this base. Leia knew, however, that the child would remain here for at least a short time after it was born, so she had some basic supplies acquired in advance: formula, diapers, a few sets of baby clothes, a crib. She goes to stand over the crib now, where the child is sleeping, her steps light and slow.

The baby girl doesn’t look like Hux, not particularly. She has surprisingly thick dark hair, and if her eyes were open, Leia suspects they would be dark, too. Maybe as she grows up, a resemblance to Hux will emerge, but as it is, she must take after her other parent.

Once again, Leia wonders who the father could possibly be. She considers having a medidroid take a blood sample and try to match the baby’s DNA against their records of all First Order members who have been captured alive by the Resistance. It’s a long shot, but the father might pop up there.

Leia stays there for a while, watching the gentle rise and fall of the baby’s chest, wondering distantly how something so small and peaceful-looking could have come from a man like Hux. There’s a dull ache under her ribs. It’s been so long since she’s been this close to an infant, and even longer since she’s held one. She’s not sure she can even remember the last time.

A moment passes. Then, against her better judgment, Leia reaches down to touch the baby’s cheek, just to remind herself of what it feels like. She still remembers when Ben was a newborn, how astonished she’d been every time she touched him. Han had marveled at him, too, at how perfect and fragile he was. It’s a sweet memory, it is, but it pains her all the same.

The instant her bare fingers brush the baby’s skin, she withdraws with a gasp, as though burned. Her eyes snap wide, unseeing. For a handful of heartbeats, she knows nothing but the feeling that resounds through her. Her very cells seem to ring in answer to some silent call. It almost doubles her over.

When she comes back to herself, she’s clutching the bars of the crib hard enough to hurt. Her eyes are unexpectedly damp. With effort, she releases her grip, blinks hard, and looks down into the crib again. The baby is still asleep, totally unaware.

Leia can’t forget what she felt just now. She still feels it—in the Force, in her own blood.

 _Ben,_ she thinks, and the name seems to echo inside her, like she’s calling out into a void. _Oh, Ben._

 

\--

 

The command room is full of voices, all of them competing to be heard. Leia had no choice but to call a meeting to discuss the most recent development. Now that Hux has delivered his child, they can finally move forward, as they would’ve in the beginning.

They don’t need Hux’s strategic information—the time for that has passed. He has nothing of value to offer them anymore. Now the only question is when the trial will begin. But first, the details have to be worked out. A location must be chosen and secured; nobody can agree on where that ought to be. Nor can they quite agree on how the sentencing committee should be structured and who should be selected to judge Hux.

There has also been debate about the format—whether they ought to hold the trial in secret and announce the verdict and sentence after the fact, or if it should be made public and broadcast via the HoloNet. Leia can see both sides. On one hand, security is an issue; the last thing they need is for the First Order to attempt an extraction, or for a Hosnian refugee to make an assassination attempt, and a secret military tribunal would greatly lessen the risk. On the other hand, the galaxy has a right to see justice done. More than that, a public trial adds transparency to the proceedings, a sense of propriety.

Already, it’s enough to give Leia a headache. She can barely think as it is. Her mind keeps floating back to that little room in medbay.

Of course, the baby is also a matter of contention. Even more than the trial, everyone seems at a loss about what to do with her. For a long time, Leia had assumed that an adoptive family would be found for her, somewhere—perhaps one that didn’t know whose child they would be raising as their own. She didn’t think it would matter much to her; she had no personal stake.

But that was before. Everything’s changed now, and all of a sudden, Leia feels like she doesn’t know anything.

Someone has already brought up adoption, or perhaps placing the child in a Mid Rim orphanage. Both options now make Leia feel queasy, though of course she can’t say so. Meanwhile, at the far end of the conference table, Admiral Grenn has been arguing stridently that something severe be done with the child, though he’s foggy on the details. Even he may not know precisely what it is that he wants done, driven only by powerful feelings of injustice and sorrow and anger. Despite herself, Leia understands where he’s coming from.

“She’s the daughter of the worst war criminal of our time!” Grenn is saying. He’s human, his dark blond hair streaked with silver, one side of his face badly scarred from a long-ago blaster shot that he’s lucky to have survived. “We can’t ignore that.”

Poe is shaking his head resolutely. “Well, what do you suggest we do, shoot her out the airlock? Is that the kind of people we are now? I can’t believe I’m hearing this—”

“What about the Hosnian refugees?” Grenn challenges. “What about all the other people who have been devastated by this war? Do you think they could ever truly feel safe or secure with Hux’s spawn loose in the galaxy? She has to be contained somehow—”

“We’re talking about a baby here,” Finn says suddenly, his brow furrowed. Leia is somewhat surprised to hear him speak up; all these months, he’s been skeptical and suspicious of Hux’s condition, like it would turn out to be some kind of trap. But then again, Finn is empathetic by nature. Now that the hypothetical child is a reality, it makes sense that his perspective may have changed. Beside him, Rey is nodding in agreement. “An actual baby. I mean, she didn’t ask to be part of this. And she hasn’t done anything to anyone.”

Grenn waves Finn’s words away. “Obviously,” he says. “But it’s not about what she’s done. It’s about what she _could_ do—what she has the _capacity_ to do. She’s got bad blood. She’s tainted.”

“As am I, Admiral,” Leia cuts across him, shooting him a sharp look. All around, the others fall silent. “My biological father was a terrible man. A killer. A scourge on the galaxy. Many have held that against me—but not the people here, in this room. Not my trusted friends and allies.” She casts her gaze around the long table, at a dozen familiar faces. “All of you understand that the circumstances of my birth have not determined who I really am as a person. I hope you won’t change your attitude when it comes to General Hux’s child. She did not choose her parents.”

For a moment, nobody speaks. Then Grenn drops his chin. “Apologies, General,” he says. “I spoke out of turn. You know I have nothing but respect for you.”

Leia just lifts one hand in acknowledgment. She feels off-balance, almost woozy, her pulse echoing in her ears, but she can’t let it show. “I think we all have a great deal to consider,” she says at last. “I propose we adjourn for the day, and meet again tomorrow to continue our discussion.”

 

\--

 

It’s not until Leia is back in her rooms that night, the door secured and the lights dimmed to twenty percent, that she allows herself to weep.

 

\--

 

Leia couldn’t block out Hux’s thoughts if she tried. Even from the other side of the base, she can sense him. 

She doesn’t hear anything in full, just snatches and echoes, barely coherent, hitting her in bursts: _where where what have they done what am I going to do I can_ _’t how I need where—_  

It’s enough to give her a near-constant migraine, throbbing behind her eyes.

Hux is in pain, too. She can pick up that much: a human-shaped imprint of agony in the Force. It is no less than he deserves, she knows—and yet, she can’t help but wonder how she would’ve felt if Ben had been taken from her the moment he was born, before she had the chance to look at him. She can’t even imagine it. Just the thought is unbearable.

How strange, to think that Hux might actually have the same feelings for his child that Leia did for hers.

She lost Ben, but at least she got to hold him first. At least he was hers, for a little while.

 

\--

 

On the third day, when Leia can no longer stand the agonized litany of Hux’s thoughts, she goes to him.

It’s been weeks since she last paid a visit to his cell, though she has glanced at the security feed a few times, despite all her promises to herself. Hux is lying down when she enters the room, but not asleep. He looks tired, in a way he never did before, as if something vital has been taken from him. Leia knows from experience that childbirth is exhausting, and recovery takes time, but it seems like more than mere physical exhaustion.

“General,” Hux says, in a deceptively bright voice. He sits up smoothly but carefully—undoubtedly still in some degree of pain from the birth. His stomach, she notices, is considerably smaller, though not yet returned to its original state. “What a surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Leia doesn’t have it in her to joust with him, not today. Taking a seat beside the cot, she demands, “What is the nature of your relationship with Kylo Ren?”

To his credit, Hux barely blinks. “We were co-commanders of the _Finalizer,_ reporting directly to Supreme Leader Snoke—”

“That’s not what I’m asking, and you know it.” Leia’s insides are shaking with something that’s not quite rage and not quite sorrow, but an awful blend of the two. Her throat aches from the effort of not shouting. “He fathered your child.”

His eyebrows arch. “Is that your newest theory? Laughable. As if I would go to bed with such a creature.”

Leia can feel his pulse spike, like an animal caught in the sights of a predator. For once, she gets no amusement from his discomfort. “We both know the truth. I only wonder how I didn’t see it before.”

A silent moment passes, seems to last forever. Leia can’t hear Hux’s thoughts, but she can imagine the thoughts humming behind his eyes. He’s trying to guess how she knows, weighing the pros and cons of denying it even now.

In the end, Hux draws himself up a little straighter and declares, “We had intimate relations. There. Is that what you wanted to hear? Does that satisfy your perverse interest in my private affairs?”

“Tell me,” she says, leaning closer, and this is the closest she will ever come to pleading with him. It feels like everything is spinning out of her grasp. She searches his eyes for some hint of feeling, but they’re as pale and cold as always. “Do you love him? Did you ever?”

Hux actually recoils from her, leaning back, as though appalled. “Don’t be revolting, General,” he sneers. “You said yourself that I’m incapable. And who could ever love a man like Kylo Ren?”

That can’t be right—not completely, anyway. Hux felt _something_ for Ben, Leia knows he did. She’s been picking up on the echoes of it all these months, every time she pressed the issue of paternity. “There must be some part of you that can still—”

“Oh, here it comes again, that mystical light-and-dark nonsense—”

“You care for your child, if nothing else,” Leia breaks in, and he freezes, as though struck. “I know you do, I’ve felt it—”

“Stay out of my head,” Hux snaps.

“I don’t mean to intrude,” Leia tells him, and she really doesn’t. If she could ignore his emotional broadcast, she wouldn’t be here right now. “But your thoughts are very loud. I can hear you from the other side of the base. I couldn’t block you out if I tried. You haven’t stopped thinking about your baby. Haven’t stopped wondering. You’re in pain—”

“That’s your own sentimentality talking,” he says, his voice more strained than she’s ever heard it. A low, throbbing pain radiates from him. He seems close to losing his composure—closer than he’s ever been during his captivity, at least. Leia isn’t sure if she’s prepared to see the moment he cracks. “Your own weakness. Don’t project it onto me.”

“Do you want to see her?” Leia asks, with a gentleness that surprises her. “Hold her?”

Hux’s eyes widen, just a fraction, for an instant—and Leia remembers, with a sharp kind of clarity, that he didn’t know the baby is a girl. He doesn’t know anything about her.

A long minute passes. Hux says nothing, just schools his face into a neutral expression and takes a few slow, deep breaths. She can feel his pulse slow its mad gallop, but not by much. In a cool voice, he asks, “What have you done with it?”

“She’s being cared for,” Leia says. “We wouldn’t harm an innocent child. Not even yours. We’re not like you.”

He makes a weak attempt at a sneer. “Ah. Finally, something we agree on.”

“I’ll ask you again. Your relationship with Kylo Ren—”

“There was no relationship.”

She presses, “Clearly, there was enough of one to make a child—”

“A catastrophic failure of contraceptives,” Hux counters, enunciating clearly. “Nothing more.”

Leia is undeterred. “I can have her brought to you. But only if you ask.”

There goes his pulse again, thudding unevenly. He doesn’t yield, though. “There’s no need for that. I have no desire to see it.”

She’s tempted to accuse him of lying, but there would be no point. He won’t crack, she thinks, not like this. He won’t show her his weak spot so readily.

Looking at him now, Leia almost can’t believe that this terror, this monster, actually bore her grandchild. It seems unjust, even cruel, that their blood should be mingled in the child, their lines and legacies inextricably bound. If Hux knew the truth, Leia thinks, he would certainly agree. He would be every bit as repulsed by her as she is by him.

Sometimes Leia thinks the universe is laughing at her.

 

\--

 

Two days later, Leia decides that the baby should be moved into her own quarters. 

She passes it off as a matter of discretion. The baby’s existence is still strictly need-to-know, and it’s a risk to keep her squirreled away in medbay, where anyone might hear her crying and get curious. It would be better to keep her someplace more private, more secure—and nowhere on this base is more secure than Leia’s own quarters. She has several adjoining rooms and thick walls, practically soundproof; it won’t be much of an inconvenience to keep the baby here. Leia would hardly have to see the child if he didn’t want to.

If anyone thinks the decision is highly irregular, they have the grace, or maybe just the good sense, not to say so. A few eyebrows are raised, but Leia is their general. Nobody is going to argue with her too much over something like this: a strange thing, but ultimately, a small one. And so the baby is very quietly transferred to a small room in Leia’s quarters, along with the necessary supplies and the medidroid that has been caring for her thus far.

What feels like a million years ago, Leia had teased Han about being a grandfather someday, an old man. They had laughed about it then—growing old still seemed like a distant dream, with Ben just a little boy and the two of them still in their prime.

Leia has idly imagined holding her first grandchild, from time to time, but never like this. Han was supposed to be here, and Ben, and Luke, their whole extended family. If they lived in a kinder world, they would all be together now, celebrating. But the world they live in is this one.

Occasionally, Leia takes over for the droid, steps in to feed or change the baby herself, the way any grandmother might. It’s been ages since she’d done this—and even when Ben was an infant, she was so busy that the nanny droid handled the bulk of these duties—but she remembers how. The mechanics are the same. And sometimes, Leia just holds the baby, rocks her. She speaks gently to her, though she’s never sure of what to say.

She doesn’t think of the baby as Hux’s. At least, she tries not to. She thinks of the baby as Ben’s. Her son’s daughter. Her only grandchild.

It helps that the girl looks almost nothing like Hux, but bears a striking resemblance to Ben when he was a newborn. Leia still has the old holos for comparison. Now that she’s looking for traces of Ben in his daughter, she can see them: the ears and nose, the soft dark hair, the watery brown eyes.

But as much as Leia wishes she could forget, the baby came from Hux as much as Ben. She is made up of the two of them in equal measure.

 

\--

 

Late one night, Leia walks into the makeshift nursery to find Rey leaning over the crib.

It’s not unusual for Rey to visit like this. Leia’s niece has access to her rooms, though she doesn’t strictly need it, not with the Force to help her convince doors to unlock themselves. Still, Leia wasn’t expecting her, and these rooms are not in their usual state.

Rey glances up when Leia enters the nursery, her expression hard to read. “I’ve never seen a baby up close before,” she says, by way of greeting. “Not a human one, anyway.” She reaches down to waggle her fingers in front of the baby’s face. “She’s a dear little thing, isn’t she? I didn’t think she would be, somehow. I’m not sure why. Poe says all babies are cute, though. Even Hutts—that’s the rule, he says.”

Leia crosses the room slowly and joins Rey on the other side of the crib. The baby is awake, gurgling happily. She has big, dark eyes.

“Finn hasn’t seen a baby before, either,” Rey goes on, fingers idly tapping on the crib’s rail. “He’s curious, but… I don’t think he’s quite _sure_ yet. Doesn’t want to cross that line. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think I do.” Standing this close, Leia can sense Rey’s nervousness, her trepidation, and wonders what preempted this visit. She must have come here for a reason—one that she seems half-afraid to voice. Cautiously, Leia ventures, “Rey…”

“She’s going to be strong in the Force, I think,” Rey comments, without looking up. She’s focused on the baby, her expression thoughtful. “I could feel her halfway across the base. That’s why I wanted to come see her, at first. Maybe I shouldn’t have. And when I touched her, I felt…” A grimace flickers across her face. “She feels— _familiar,_ somehow. It’s the strangest thing. I don’t know how to explain it, except that it’s almost like what I felt when I first met you. And again, with Luke.”

For a long moment, Leia can’t bring herself to speak. She knows the feeling that Rey’s referring to, and she knows what it means. Rey does, too, she suspects, even if she doesn’t want to be the first to say it.

“Kylo Ren is the father,” Leia says at last, the words feeling clumsy in her mouth. It’s surreal to say it out loud, to admit it to another soul. She closes her eyes for half a heartbeat, feels the old pain pulse beneath her ribs.

Rey looks up sharply. She doesn’t look shocked, not exactly—she must’ve had her suspicions that this baby has some connection to the Skywalker line. But she looks somewhat pained, as if echoing Leia. “Are you sure?”

Leia nods wearily. “I felt it, too, as soon as I touched her—a sort of kinship. There was no mistaking it. Of course, I had a blood test done, too,” she adds. “Just in case. I’ve never wanted to be wrong about something so badly. But there it is.”

“So she…” Rey’s brow is furrowed as she looks down at the baby again. “That makes her your…”

“Granddaughter,” Leia says, quietly. “And if I recall my genealogy lessons correctly, that makes her your first cousin, once removed.”

For a long minute, Rey is silent. She seems to be processing this information with difficulty; Leia can sympathize. And then, out of the blue, she blurts, “But—Kylo Ren and the general?” She starts shaking her head. “It doesn’t make any sense! Finn only saw them together a few times, when he was stationed on Starkiller, but he says they hated each other’s guts. They only tolerated each other because of Snoke.”

“Yes, well—” Leia allows herself a brief grimace. “It seems there was more to it than that.”

Rey considers this for a moment. “Well,” she says, uncertain but hopeful. “If there’s enough light in him to love someone, then maybe—”

“I don’t know that love was ever part of the equation,” Leia says gently. Whatever passed between Ben and Hux, it was—powerful. She can sense that much. But she doesn’t guess at whether there was any tender feeling, any affection. All she knows for sure is that there was a physical union of some kind, at least one time, and it resulted in this baby.

Leia doesn’t know if what Ben shared with Hux means that her son has fallen further into the darkness than she previously believed, or if perhaps the general has more light in him than she ever imagined possible. Surely it must be one of the two. Or maybe she’s oversimplifying.

“I didn’t mean Kylo,” Rey says. She wets her lower lip with her tongue, looking unsure. “He loves his baby, doesn’t he? He must.”

“You’re talking about Hux?”

Rey nods grimly. “There’s a terrible noise coming from his cell, all the time,” she says. “Only it’s not a noise, it’s in my head, and I can’t shut it out. That’s him, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Leia should’ve realized that she wasn’t the only one picking up on Hux’s distress. Rey seems to be sensing only the raw edges of it, the incoherent rumble of his pain, while Leia has been receiving all of that, as well as his frantic thoughts. “I’m afraid that’s one of the inconveniences of Force sensitivity. Sometimes you feel things that you’d rather not.”

“Well—is he all right?” Rey looks genuinely concerned, her mouth tight. “It feels awful. Like he’s in pain.”

It’s a moment before Leia explains, “He hasn’t seen the baby yet. She was removed immediately, at the birth. I imagine that’s the cause of it.”

“Oh.” Again, Rey glances at the crib, where the baby is clumsily moving her limbs. “He really didn’t get to see her at all?”

“He’s asked to,” Leia admits. “A guard passed along his request last night.”

“Are you going to let him?”

“In all honesty, I don’t know.” Before yesterday, Leia was beginning to think that, despite Hux’s feelings, he might never break down enough to take her up on her offer. He’s always seemed the type who would rather suffer proudly than admit any kind of weakness to an enemy.

But he did break. Hux had to know he was showing a vulnerability, a weak spot, and he asked anyway. Maybe now, sensing the end, he’s decided it doesn’t matter anymore.

Leia made that offer in good faith, on an impulse, but now she is unsure if she ought to follow through. It might not be the best idea. She’s not bound by her offer to Hux, except by her own sense of obligation. But her father, she thinks suddenly, her true father, Bail Organa, would expect her to keep her word, even to an enemy—and even now, Leia hates the thought of disappointing her father.

“What’s going to happen to her?” Rey asks eventually, nodding toward the crib.

“I’m afraid I don’t know that, either. There are no perfect options. She won’t be like other children. She’ll be… strong. Like Ben.” When he was small, Leia had scarcely known what to do with him. Sometimes the walls rattled when he was upset; sometimes things broke, shattered by some unseen power. She didn’t want to be afraid of him, but she didn’t know how to help him, either. And when it came down to it, neither did Luke. “Wherever she’s placed, it won’t be easy.”

“But you can’t explain that to the rest of command without revealing the whole story,” Rey says sagely. “And then it’s a conflict of interest and you can’t be involved at all.”

Leave it to Rey to see straight into the heart of the issue. “This way, at least I can have some input in what happens,” Leia acknowledges. Then she exhales slowly, shaking her head. “I can’t say this is how I imagined becoming a grandmother. But she’s here, and there’s no changing it.”

“It’s not exactly how I used to picture my family, either,” Rey confesses, but there’s a faint gleam in her eyes and a small smile pulling at the sides of her mouth. “I have a father, an aunt and a cousin I’d never dreamed of—and now, another cousin. And what a mess it all is.”

Leia manages a weary smile in return. “Welcome to the family,” she says. “Theatrics on a galactic stage are part and parcel of being a Skywalker, or so I’m told.”

A moment passes, the two of them looking down into the crib again. Rey’s eyes go dark and serious, and when she looks up, it’s as if she’s searching for something in Leia’s face. She worries her lower lip with her teeth. “Do you want to?” she asks suddenly. “Be… involved, I mean?”

Leia hears the question she’s not asking: _Can_ _’t you take her? Do you want to?_

“What I want doesn’t really come into play,” she says, because she can’t bring herself to answer directly. If things were very different, nothing would make her happier than to be part of her granddaughter’s life—but as it stands, it’s impossible. “I have to think of what’s best—for her, and everyone else. And the way I see it, the best option, the safest, is for her to grow up as far away from all of us as possible. If anyone were to find out who she really is—” 

“Isn’t that what they thought when they separated you and Luke?” Rey breaks in, her voice taut. She’s got a pinched look on her face, like something sharp is digging into her. “And isn’t that what Luke thought when he abandoned me on Jakku? Why is it that our family’s first impulse is always to scatter to the winds?”

Leia’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Shock, maybe. A moment later, she recovers her voice. “What are you saying?”

At that, Rey seems to deflate a bit. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says, sounding miserable. “It just all seems so needlessly awful. There has to be something we can do that’s better than banishing her to live with strangers. She’s family, Leia. I know she’s part of Hux, and part of Kylo, but that can’t be all she is. You said it yourself.”

“I remember,” Leia says quietly, and she does. In the back of her mind, she’s thinking of Hux’s message again, the only request he’s made all this time. It is at once small and enormous. But she can spare a few minutes, at least. She can let him hold his baby just one time and then remove her again. “And we’ll think of something.”

Rey nods faintly, her eyes on the baby, who seems close to falling asleep. But she looks unconvinced.

 

\--

 

Leia has never called on Hux at such an early hour, but slipping out of her quarters just as morning light steals across the base is her best chance of going unnoticed—especially with a conspicuous basket in her arms. At least the baby has dozed the whole way; if she’d woken up and cried in the middle of a corridor, Leia isn’t sure how she would’ve handled it.

Hux is awake when Leia enters his cell, despite the early hour. Of course, if the security feed is anything to go by, he doesn’t sleep much anymore, and hasn’t since the birth. He stands as the door shuts behind Leia, glances at the basket with bloodshot eyes, but asks no questions. They both know why she’s here.

“Why did you change your mind?” Leia asks. Before she gives him anything, she wants to hear him say it.

A moment passes before he admits, “I thought it would be a shame to die without ever seeing it.”

The funny thing is, Leia believes him. She believes that he wants this—narcissism, maybe, a desire to see his legacy. Or maybe it’s something else. She places the basket on the table without comment.

Hux approaches as if the basket is likely to explode. Cautiously, he leans in to look inside.

His expression changes, almost imperceptibly, when he sees the baby—a slight widening of the eyes, a twitch along the jaw. Instantly, his pulse kicks up, and his breath catches a little in his throat. Standing this close, his thoughts are loud, pulsing across the forefront of his mind: _so small_ and _mine_ and _she looks like Ren._

A long moment passes. And then, with great care, Hux picks up the baby.

Leia resists the urge to remind him to support her head. For a moment, she watches the baby squirm in Hux’s arms before settling into the warmth of his body. He doesn’t hold his daughter as if he’s already intimately familiar with her, from carrying her in his body, but rather like she is some fragile, alien thing that he’s afraid he might break. He’s looking at the baby as if he’s never seen anything like her.

“I had a son,” Leia tells him, before she can think better of it. “Once.”

He doesn’t look up. “I know.”

Of course he does. It was widely known that she and Han had a child—Ben Solo was never a secret. The real question is if Hux has any idea of who Kylo Ren really is. Leia has to know. She’ll go mad otherwise. “His name was Ben,” she tells him. “He was a sweet boy. Quiet. Lost in thought half the time, and tugging on my sleeve, the other half. He was—” There’s an ache in the center of her chest, one that’s hard to breathe around. “He really never told you?”

Hux finally spares her a glance. He looks up from the baby almost reluctantly. “Who? I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

Reaching out with the Force, Leia is faintly amazed to sense that he’s telling the truth. He has no idea who really fathered his child. She wants to tell him, almost, if only to hear his reaction, if only to share the burden with another soul. But she knows she can never do that.

“My boy was taken from me,” Leia says instead. “Just this once, I understand you. I never thought I would.”

At that, Hux gathers the baby a little closer to his chest, in a way that look almost unconscious. “I don’t want your pity,” he spits. “I don’t need it.”

“It’s not pity.” Leia watches him for a moment more, watches him drink in the sight of his child, and feels the old pain again, deep in her chest. “It’s astonishing, isn’t it? How much love you can feel for something so small. It’s enough to knock you over.”

The first time Leia held Ben in her arms, she had been overwhelmed. He was just a tiny thing, wrinkled and squalling, and yet he was already the whole galaxy to her. It seemed too much for one person, all this tenderness and joy and even fear.

She can sense that Hux is overwhelmed now, too, though perhaps in a different way than she had been. Holding his child doesn’t seem to have alleviated his pain—if anything, it’s heightened. Leia knows he must be acutely aware of the fact that she’ll take the baby from him soon, and he will never see her again.

The second separation will undoubtedly be more excruciating than the first, now that he knows the weight of his child in his arms, the precise color of her hair, the impossible softness of her skin. But he asked for this. He wanted to see her, and he’ll have to accept the emotional fallout.

“The war is almost over, General,” she tells him, not unkindly. “The Resistance is poised to strike the final blow. You had your chance to cooperate, and you chose not to. We have no further use for you. There’s no reason to postpone the trial any longer. You will answer for what you’ve done.”

“Understood,” Hux replies—not defeated, exactly, but resigned.

For another minute, they stand in silence. Leia knows she’ll have to remove the child, sooner rather than later, but she can’t quite bring herself to say the words. Not just yet. Once, she had relished the thought of taking something vital from Hux—but now, it brings her no pleasure, only a deep unease.

“It isn’t her fault that she’s mine, General,” Hux says, quietly. He doesn’t take his eyes off the baby, like he’s trying to memorize her. “Or his. Remember that.”

Leia promises, “I will.”

 

\--

 

In the dream, Leia is walking through the old apartment on Hosnian Prime, her steps slow and measured. She trails her hand along the wall, humming along with the music playing in the next room. It’s a piece by an Alderaanian composer, her mother’s favorite.

Leia used to put this music on when she sat down to braid her hair in the way her mother had taught her when she was a girl: a distinctive, traditional style reserved for members of the Royal House of Alderaan. Listening to the music made her feel close to her mother, as if Breha might glide into the room at any moment to lovingly inspect her braiding. Leia taught Ben to braid his own hair, as well—it was her duty to give him that tradition, and a hundred others that might’ve been lost with Alderaan.

She follows the music, into the spacious sitting room. Ben is there, seated on a low couch—the white one that he was forever spilling things on when he was little. In the pale morning light, he is a study in contrasts: ink-dark hair, a pale face bisected by a ruddy scar.

Abruptly, Leia understands that this is not a proper dream, because the Ben who appears before her now is undoubtedly a man, one she has never seen before, and in her dreams, he’s always a boy—her boy, the one she lost. She almost can’t believe how big he is, bigger and broader than Han, grown into his long limbs. He’s seated now, but she can tell he would tower over her standing.

She wants to cry just at the sight of him. Ever since he left, she’s been reaching out to him through the Force, searching for him, but he’s never opened himself to her before now. Step by step, she approaches him.

Ben doesn’t glance up at her until she’s close enough to touch him: a sharp look, more of a warning than anything else. Just like when she watches the old holos, he is both here and not here. He’s so close, and yet she can’t touch him. She will probably never touch him again.

Leia sinks down into another seat, spine straight, and waits.

“Tell me about the child,” Ben says at last, in a deceptively flat voice. He speaks in Basic, not Alderaanian, which makes Leia feel as if he’s rejected her all over again. “I know you have her.”

In the last few days, Leia has wondered many times if Ben had any idea that he was going to be a father. Prior to his capture, Hux had no idea that he was pregnant, but there’s a possibility that Ben might’ve sensed something when the two of them were last together, even before the physical signs became apparent. Now that the child is born, the chances of him sensing her through the Force, even across a great distance, would only have increased.

“She’s healthy. And she’s beautiful, Ben,” Leia tells him—in Basic, though it feels almost wrong to speak that language with him, in private, when they never did before. His face twists at the sound of his name; she almost regrets using it. “She looks so much like you—”

“You shouldn’t even look at her,” he cuts across her, savagely. On the mantle behind them, something falls and shatters. Leia doesn’t look back to see what it was. “You have no right.”

Leia chooses not to argue that point just now. Instead, she asks, “Why are we here, Ben? What do you want?”

He looks at her steadily. “You know what I want.”

“That’s something I don’t have the power to give,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t help Hux. Maybe I could’ve, once, but he refused to cooperate. Now there will be a trial. There has to be, and I can’t promise he’ll survive it. His crimes—”

“What about mine?” Ben challenges. His eyes are dark and full of writhing shapes. “Whatever you tell yourself at night so you can sleep, he and I are the same. You can’t separate one from the other. He is half of me.”

“That’s not true. There is still light in you, Ben, I know it—”

“You begged me for my forgiveness once,” he says suddenly. “You said you would do anything to make it right, anything. Did you lie to me then, too?”

Leia is taken aback. She knows what he’s referring to: the message she sent him when the truth of her heritage—of _their_ heritage—was revealed to the galaxy. She had broken down, pleaded with him to forgive her for not telling him sooner, feeling like her chest had cracked open. But he never responded, and until now, she couldn’t be sure he’d ever received it in the first place.

“I can’t spare him,” she tells him now. “Not even for your sake. It’s impossible. You know that. But I can take care of your daughter. I can make sure she’s with a family that will love her—”

She knows instantly that it was the wrong thing to say. Ben gives a howl like a wounded animal, surging to his feet, and the dream-apartment shudders, rippling around them like an optical illusion. “You won’t even take the responsibility yourself,” he yells, each word as harsh as a slap. “You’ll just hand her off to strangers! Your own grandchild—”

Leia raises her hands in a placating gesture. “Ben, I only—”

“How very like you,” he seethes, as the holophotos and framed art on the walls begin to rattle. Furniture shudders, scraping against the floor. Outside the window, the sky goes dark and bright in flashes. “You haven’t changed at all. You pretend to care, to love, always from a safe distance—”

“You can’t frighten me like this, Ben,” she tells him, rising, and it’s true. She eases closer to him, step by step. “You’re my son. I’m not afraid of you—”

“That was always your mistake.”

Leia shakes her head, resolutely, even as the dream warps around them. The paint is peeling off the walls, flaking away like rust, and dust sifts down from the ceiling. She’s losing him; she can feel it. “We can figure this out together,” she says. “Wherever you are, come home—”

“He said the same thing, before I killed him.” Ben rounds on her, as if daring her to try to explain away what he did to Han. The old pain pulses in Leia’s chest again. “I used to beg you to let me come home. Do you remember?”

“Of course I do.” Leia’s watched his old holos too many times to count, practically memorized them, bitterly regretting all the times she refused to take him back. _Give it more time,_ she’d told him, again and again. _It will get better. You just have to give it time._ Maybe everything still would’ve gone wrong if she’d given in—but now she’ll never know if she could’ve helped him. “Come home,” she says again, pleading. “Your daughter is here, Ben. You can be her father. You can raise her, and be a family—”

A barely-human scream tears out of him. “You think I need your _permission?_ ” he roars, and the windows shatter inward, spraying the room with transparisteel, sucking the wind inside. Jagged chunks of transparisteel rain over them both, but this is a dream, and it doesn’t cut them. “You think Her Royal Highness has to grant me her _leave_ to raise my own child?”

“Ben—” She has to shout his name to be heard over the wind.

“I’ll take better care of my family than you ever did yours,” he tells her, making it sound like both a threat and a promise. The wind whips his dark hair across his face, into his eyes. “I won’t abandon them. And you won’t keep me from them.”

She reaches for him, desperately. “Ben, wait—”

And then he’s gone. It’s all gone, the whole dreamscape, leaving Leia in her own bed and feeling as if she’s washed up on some unknown shore.

In the next room, the baby is crying, the sound muffled through the thick walls. For half a minute, Leia doesn’t move, just stares at the ceiling, dry-eyed and heartsick. This late at night, she generally leaves it to the medidroid to soothe the baby, whether she needs feeding or changing or is just lonely.

The thin wailing persists. Leia remembers what Ben said to her in the dream that was not a dream, the words he threw at her about love and responsibility.

She hauls herself out of bed, her joints creaking in protest, and pads into the next room. Then she waves the medidroid away from the crib and picks up the crying baby herself. For a long time, Leia holds her granddaughter against her shoulder, swaying a little on the spot the way she once did with Ben, humming that airy Alderaanian music.

 

\--

 

The comm alert comes in late in the night cycle, but Leia is awake to receive it. She’s been waiting for this update, so anxiously that it feels almost like being ill—her pulse racing, her insides shaky. Donning a composed expression, the same one she used to wear when she addressed the Senate, Leia accepts the comm.

Poe’s face appears on the display. Immediately, Leia asks, “Status?”

“Package delivered, safe and sound,” Poe says. He smiles calmly, as if to put her at ease. It’s a kind gesture, if a futile one.

“It’s a really nice place,” Finn adds, edging into view. “Pretty, with the trees and the lake and everything. And they seemed like nice people.” He clears his throat, a bit awkwardly. “I think it was a good choice, General, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Finn,” Leia tells him, diplomatically. He is trying to be kind, she knows, for her sake, despite his own conflicted feelings about the situation.

Finn knows the truth now, as does Poe. It seemed unfair to keep them in the dark, considering their participation in this mission. Besides, a part of Leia takes comfort in the knowledge that she isn’t alone in this secret, that there are others who can share the burden with her. It doesn’t make the load lighter, exactly, but it heartens her all the same. She’s grateful that the two of them took the news as gracefully as they did.

Out of sight but undoubtedly in the cockpit, Rey is conspicuously silent. She doesn’t approve of Leia’s decision, but at least she understands it. She even volunteered to deliver the child to the adoptive family personally, in Leia’s place. Of course, Finn wanted to accompany her, and naturally, Poe wanted to accompany him. Leia saw no harm it; the three of them have become something of a package deal.

And now the deed is done. Hux’s child—Leia’s granddaughter—has been delivered to her new home, her new family. In Leia’s quarters, the nursery stands empty. It will never be used that way again.

“We should be back on base by twelve-hundred hours,” Poe says.

“Very good,” Leia says, forcing a smile. “And excellent work all around. There’s no one else I would’ve trusted with this.”

Poe signs off, and when the display goes dark, Leia allows herself to slump back into her chair, exhausted. A slow breath escapes her. Once again, she reminds herself that this is for the best. She only wishes she could’ve handed over the baby herself—but she can’t leave the base for so long, not for something like this. It would raise too many eyebrows. She’s already toeing the line of appropriate interest in Hux’s child.

They’ve passed the child off as a war orphan, just as Leia’s own parents did when they adopted her. It prickles uncomfortably of the mistakes of the past, but Leia can’t see a way around it. The child has to be placed somewhere; better it happen now, when Leia can decide where she goes.

A few enclaves of Alderaanian culture remain scattered throughout the galaxy—communities founded by the few thousand people who were off-planet at the time of the destruction, now populated by their children and grandchildren, as well. The adoptive family Leia has selected is part of one such community. A married couple, the two women have three children already, and they own an orchard on a temperate Mid Rim world.

On paper, they’re perfect. Leia is confident that the girl will want for nothing. She is as comfortable giving her granddaughter to them as it’s possible to be—which isn’t to say that she is entirely comfortable. She has reservations and regrets, but no better options. This is how it must be.

She has it all worked out. As the child grows up, Leia will take a “special interest” in her. She will look in on the child from time to time, pay for her education, perhaps even mentor her in the ways of the Force, if she shows an ability. Already, Leia has corresponded with the adoptive mothers to that effect, to lay the groundwork well in advance, and they’ve been receptive. And why wouldn’t they be? They are Alderaanian, daughters of parents who narrowly escaped the destruction, and to this day, they consider Leia to be their princess before she is anything else.

Of course, they have no idea that the child they’ve just adopted is their princess, too.

When the time comes, when the girl is old enough to understand, Leia will tell her everything, about both of her fathers, and her great-grandfather, as well. She won’t make the same mistakes that she did with Ben.

She won’t.

 

\--

 

Three and a half weeks after Hux’s child is born, and four days after the child is adopted by the Alderaanian family, Leia approves Hux’s transfer for the trial. A small, specialized team will deliver him to an out-of-the-way Mid Rim planet, where he will be held for a short period before the trial begins. His capture hasn’t been announced yet, and won’t be until shortly before proceedings start, but when the news finally breaks, it will be the talk of the galaxy—the trial of the century, undoubtedly.

The arrangements have come together faster than Leia thought they would, considering all the initial disagreement among command. Apparently, the desire for justice and closure, if such a thing is even possible at this point, has outweighed any quibbles about details.

For Leia, it seems as if all of this has happened at a dreamlike pace, both fast and slow. It’s strange, almost disorienting, to suddenly see the end ahead of her when she’d half-thought it would never come. She’ll be able to put all this behind her soon—at least, she’ll be able to put Hux behind her. She won’t take part in the upcoming trial, probably won’t even watch the broadcast on the HoloNet.

Leia never told Hux about his daughter’s adoption. She’d considered it, briefly, but in the end, she didn’t see what good could come of telling him. He might not even believe her.

Whether he lives or dies, he won’t know what became of his daughter. He’ll never know who she grows up to be. Leia reminds herself that it’s no less than he deserves.

 

\--

 

The transfer team never arrives at their destination.

As soon as Leia receives word that they’ve missed their check-in, her blood runs cold. An awful certainty settles low in her gut—not a Force feeling, but a mother’s intuition.

Nobody answers the hail, but the ship’s tracker is still emitting a signal. A second team is sent out to investigate; they find the ship with the engines cut, drifting in the middle of space. The transfer team is dead—four shot at close range, two with crushed windpipes. Hux is gone. All security data has been wiped, making it impossible to tell exactly what happened. They can’t even be sure of how many people boarded the ship.

Leia spends all day and half the night in endless meetings. Command is scrambling to determine how this could’ve happened and who is responsible. Where is the security leak that made this strike possible? Is there a mole in their ranks, at the highest levels of the Resistance? What does this mean for the war effort, especially if Hux has been returned to the First Order? What is the next step?

In these meetings, Leia listens more than she speaks. There isn’t much to say. She has a feeling that Hux isn’t about to reappear on the battlefield, leading his troops, but to suggest that would be to reveal too much.

Late that night, when she finally retires to her quarters—bone-tired and yet knowing she’ll be unable to sleep—Rey accompanies her. Neither of them is keen to be alone with their thoughts tonight.

“Everyone seems convinced that it was the First Order’s doing,” Rey says, glancing sidelong at Leia.

“That does seem most likely,” Leia says delicately. It’s not a lie—signs do point to the First Order. There’s no shortage of individuals and organizations with the motive to take Hux from the Resistance, all for their own purposes, but few have the means. Additionally, the strike itself was remarkably precise and efficient, which strongly suggests military.

Deep down, of course, Leia knows who the culprit was. She knows who snatched Hux from their hands and murdered six of her people. So does Rey, even if she doesn’t say it out loud. She doesn’t have to.

Just the thought of what happened nauseates Leia. Suddenly, she has no idea what to do, how to move forward from this. She feels as dead in the water as the transfer ship—cut adrift. And more than that, she feels guilty. She should’ve anticipated this, taken Ben at his word when he came to her in that dream. She should’ve taken better precautions. She should’ve done a million things differently, beginning thirty years ago.

“Leia…” Rey’s expression is troubled, her eyes dark with worry. “If he did this for Hux, what else might he do?”

“What else is there?” Leia asks reflexively, before her mind catches up. Then her heart stumbles. She goes for her comm.

 

\--

 

For a day and a half, Leia is unable to make contact with the adoptive family. She fears the worst, until she receives a comm alert from Amah, one of the adoptive mothers.

The moment her face appears on the display, Leia knows something has gone horribly wrong. Amah’s eyes are bloodshot and shadowed by dark circles. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days.

Haltingly, Amah explains: Two nights ago, someone set fire to the orchard. By the time the blaze was contained, more than half the trees were gone—and in the commotion, nobody noticed a stranger slipping into the farmhouse.

“She’s gone,” Amah sobs. She’s hoarse from almost two days of shouting and crying. “We came back to the house, and the baby was missing. Just—gone.”

Leia’s breath catches painfully in her throat. “Was anyone hurt? The children—”

“No, no, the other children are all right,” Amah says thickly. She passes a hand over her face, takes a shuddering breath. “I just don’t understand how this could happen. Why would anyone do this? Princess, I’m so sorry. We let this happen, we—”

“None of that,” Leia says, as gently as she can manage. “What happened isn’t your fault. The important thing is the rest of your family is safe.” She takes a breath to steel herself. “Did anyone see the intruder? The other children, maybe?”

Amah shakes her head. “They said they didn’t see anything. But how can that be? Our oldest is thirteen. She was supposed to watch the little ones when we ran out of the house, but she says she doesn’t even remember when she noticed the baby was missing. That’s not like her, Princess, none of this makes any sense—” She breaks off, sobbing harder. “We hadn’t even named her yet! And she could be anywhere by now. Anything might’ve happened to her! Oh, gods, what are we going to do?”

Leia does her best to console the other woman, though in the back of her mind, she’s running calculations. By her reckoning, the fire was set about eight hours before the transfer ship was boarded. Considering the orchard’s position in space and the transfer ship’s planned route, there would’ve been plenty of time for someone to set the fire, take advantage of the commotion and make off with the baby, and then intercept the ship midway through its journey.

 _Ben,_ Leia thinks, despairingly. _What have you done? And what are you going to do?_

 

\--

 

Weeks pass, and then months. The war goes on. Hux doesn’t resurface. Neither does Kylo Ren, though Leia seems to be the only person who’s truly concerned with him at this point.

Naturally, command is flummoxed. If Hux was rescued by the remains of the First Order, surely he would be involved with the war effort, helping to lead them. Search efforts are undertaken with the utmost secrecy—it would be a disaster for the galaxy to learn that the Resistance had Hux in custody and lost him. They can’t risk that kind of public outrage.

The baby’s disappearance doesn’t go unnoticed by command. It can’t be a coincidence that the two events happened almost simultaneously, which means that whoever is responsible for the transport leak—a culprit who hasn’t been found yet, and who Leia knows never will be—also leaked intel about Hux’s child. All told, this suggests that the First Order may not have been behind the strike after all. Perhaps it was an act of revenge by an unknown party who wanted to wipe out General Hux and his entire line.

 _Wipe it out,_ Leia muses darkly, _or protect it._

She knows the true shape of the situation, of course, but she still can’t reveal it to the rest of command. It eats away at her.

It’s almost funny, in an awful way—this is what she’d once wished for Ben, in the dark hours of the night. She had hoped he would abandon the First Order and disappear somewhere, start a new life, make a family of his own. Of course, she never imagined anything like this. She got what she wanted, but not in the way she expected, and at a higher price than she would’ve liked to pay.

Leia still wants to bring Hux to justice for his crimes, wants it so badly that it makes her teeth ache. It kills her that he’s escaped punishment yet again, possibly for good this time. She doubts the Resistance will find him, not if Ben doesn’t want him found.

There has been talk of waiting until the dust has settled and then quietly disseminating information that Hux was killed in the war. The galaxy needs closure where Hux is concerned, some say, a conclusion of some kind. Hux can’t be allowed to hang over them forever like a specter. Leia sees the logic in that, but she can’t support the Resistance deliberately spreading such a lie. She’s lied enough where Hux is concerned, both outright and by omission.

From now on, the only person Leia intends to lie to is herself.

 

\--

 

Six standard months after Hux’s disappearance, the Resistance formally declares victory over the First Order. That same day, Poe and Finn announce their engagement.

It turns out to be a very short engagement indeed; swept up in the celebration, the two of them slip off together before dawn, along with Rey. Technically a ship’s captain—the _Falcon_ has remained in her possession, and perhaps always will—Rey has the authority to perform marriages. She does so, with BB-8 as the witness. By the time both suns have risen over the planet and the rest of the Resistance are sleeping off their hangovers, Finn and Poe have become the Damerons.

Leia hears about it in the morning, when Rey finds her in the mess hall, and the story makes her smile—genuinely smile, for the first time in months. She and Han did the same thing, after the destruction of the second Death Star. Looking back, she’s not entirely sure of whose idea it was, if it was hers or Han’s. Maybe they both thought of it at the same time: looked at each other, realized that the war was over, they had their whole lives ahead of them, and they wanted nothing more than to spend it together.

“So how do you feel?” Leia asks, sliding a strong cup of caf across the table.

Rey accepts the caf with a smile, tired but pleased. “Just now? Like it’s not quite real yet, and any moment, I’m going to wake up.” Her eyes crinkle the corners as her smile widens. “But we really won, didn’t we?”

“We did. But the real work’s just beginning.” Leia knows from experience. Building a government is no easy task—in some ways, it’s harder than winning a war. This time, she promises herself, they will do better. They’ll learn from their mistakes, and this peace will last. It has to.

For a while, she and Rey sit in companionable silence, watching as people begin to trickle into the mess hall.

“Will they do all right with her, do you think?” Rey asks eventually. She looks down into her cup as if it holds some answer.

Leia doesn’t have to ask who she means. They don’t speak much about the baby; sometimes Leia suspects that Rey avoids the subject because she knows how painful it is for Leia. But evidently, the end of the war, and possibly Poe and Finn’s impromptu wedding, have got her thinking about family matters. “How do you mean?”

“Well,” Rey says slowly, “before, when you talked about bad blood…” She shakes her head. “I don’t believe there’s such a thing. I don’t think people are really born good or bad. If she had stayed with us, or even with that other family, maybe it would’ve been all right. But if the two of them raise her themselves, what kind of chance will she have?”

“You’re wondering if they’re likely to raise a new dark lord,” Leia says. “Is that it?”

“The thought has crossed my mind,” Rey admits. She sips her caf, looking too world-weary for someone so young. “You haven’t thought about it?”

“Occasionally.” In truth, Leia sometimes lies awake at night thinking of it, dread coiling thick in her chest—a child of Kylo Ren and Armitage Hux, full of their blood and their ideals, the best and the worst of them both. Another heir to the Skywalker legacy, bound for either greatness or tragedy. For their family, Leia fears, there is no in-between, no real possibility for a peaceful life.

“I know I said once that there must be light in Hux,” Rey goes on. “Even a little, enough for him to love someone. And I still believe there is—in Kylo, too. But people do awful things for love sometimes, don’t they?”

Leia nods, thinking again of the transport team, and the burned orchard. “Sometimes. That’s why the Jedi discouraged attachment, as I understand it.”

“But it didn’t work. Luke says so, anyway. He says that kind of suppression, that detachment, is unnatural. It’s not truly sustainable, and in the end, it led to the destruction of the Order.”

“I don’t pretend to be an expert on Jedi history,” Leia says. In such matters, she generally defers to Luke’s expertise. “But I agree with the sentiment. We love because we can’t help it. We love, and we hope for the best.”

Rey gives her a long look, over the rim of her cup. “Is that what you’re doing? Hoping for the best?”

Movement catches Leia’s eye. She glances up and sees Poe and Finn ducking into the mess hall, hand in hand, wearing the same clothes as last night—slightly more rumpled now, she notices. Leia greets them with a wave of her hand, and Rey whoops at them, and they both laugh. The two of them look bleary but incandescent, too in love to worry about how little sleep they got last night. Leia can’t help but smile at the sight of them. Even now, after all these years, she remembers what that feels like.

“Yes,” Leia says at last, as the Damerons join them at the table. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> a number of people have asked for Leia’s side of the story, and since her scenes with Hux were the most interesting for me to write the first time around, writing this fic was a no-brainer. it came together remarkably fast, too—normally, I’m a pretty slow writer, but I guess this one really grabbed me and ran away with me. I hope you had as much fun reading as I did writing!
> 
> okay, let’s talk about Latinx people in Star Wars. I’m a mixed Latina, so when I read [this cool post](http://linguisticjubilee.tumblr.com/post/138838039179/space-latinxs) positing Alderaan as Space Puerto Rico and Leia as an adopted Space Latina—that is, culturally Latina, because of her adoptive parents—I immediately latched onto that headcanon. when Leia and Poe speak privately together this fic, please know that they are speaking Space Spanish. this headcanon also extends to Ben, who surely would’ve learned Space Spanish from Leia when he was little.
> 
> thank you for reading! next time, we’ll catch up with the galaxy’s most dysfunctional family and see how they’re doing. I’m really excited about this upcoming installment, and I hope you’ll look forward to it. don’t forget to [subscribe to the series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/490429) if you want to get an email letting you know the moment it’s posted!
> 
> catch me [on tumblr](http://saltandrockets.tumblr.com/), too! send me your Space Latinx headcanons and other good stuff. xoxoxo


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